Tag Archives: Internet freedom

The Internet is the freest place on earth and it is awesome. I’ve been using it now for over 20 years (that is crazy, my dad for nearly 40 – no kidding) and I still catch myself thinking what a miracle it is. It is a revolution. It is the printing press cubed. And it scares the HELL out of the establishment.

Passwords are too easy to hack we are told. Much better to have a government issued Internet ID one must sign in with every time one logs on. Much better to have the government issue a license to access information.

Remember SOPA? The hiddeous beast of a bill sponsored by Hollywood which sought to jam the file content sharing genie back in the bottle? The bill that the whole Internet world rose up against and forced the politicians to back down on? Remember that? Well one of the lobbyists who headed the effort to severely restrict the Internet so that the media companies could cling to their outdated business models has now been nominated by Obama to head the effort in the secret (to us – hundreds of corporations are in on what is going on) Trans Pacific Partnership talks.

This is the (supposed) guts of the surveillance state. What Big Brother looks like on the inside. Amazing public information if half right. The NSA was given the chance to comment on the chart and has decided not to.

On Internet freedom and the increasingly massive surveillance state we must make our voices heard now. This is our country. If we value our liberty, or freedom, our dignity as citizens, we must collectively register, and continue to register our anger.

3D printing is a massively disruptive technology. Sure, one can print a gun with this technology but one can build a gun if one really wants to from materials at a hardware store. “Zip guns” which are made from everyday industrial materials have been around since the gun was invented. But there is a much bigger issue in play here.

CISPA (the “cyber security bill” currently being kicked around Congress) is a dangerous piece of legislation. Like SOPA before it, which was defeated by the sheer deluge of opposition from the public, it seeks to hand ultimate control over important parts of the Internet to the federal government and would also allow the government to monitor whatever communication over the Internet that it wishes without a warrant or judicial oversight.